From the author of The Carolina Slade Mystery Series and editor of FundsforWriters.com.
Writing can be such a sweet life, once we decide to make it so.

Friday, April 08, 2011

From the Many to the Few

Read 10 times more words than you write.
Write 10 times more words than you keep.
Keep 10 times more words than you publish.

No, I have no scientific study to verify the numbers. I just know what I'd had to go through. If I counted what I read online each day, and review in critique groups and contests, the comparison is way low. Heck, it might be closer to 100 times.

In other words, you search through a lot of weeds before you find a piece of fruit. (Forgive me. I love gardening analogies.)

Ten times is not low. For instance,. you write 2,500 words for every 25,000 you read. It's not an exaggerated number. I hope it's realistic enough to stop you in your tracks and make you count in your head how close you are to it. It's not too much to ask of . . . a writer.

In National Novel Writing Month, people gather around the NaNoWriMo website in November and write their hearts out, with a goal of 50,000 words. Many don't make it (after all, it's Thanksgiving month). Those that do, however, feel so accomplished. Rightfully so. Darned if I could write 50K in 30 days in a month wrought with social obligations. But those that succeed, then find themselves with the need to finish the novel since 50K words probably is half or two-thirds of the project. Then comes time to edit. We never hear about how much of those 50K - 100K words get reduced. We only hear about fine tuning those quick words and publishing, when actually that 50K was just scratching the surface.

Quantity is quality - up the mountain with a draft of many words, then down as we edit it to a tight finish. Don't be afraid to spray gobs of words. Don't be afraid to throw them away.

The more words you handle, the more you know how to pick the right ones. And there's no software, how-to book, or course to teach you otherwise.

In this world of fast publishing and instant-click-gratification, don't let the pace make you hit send a few hundred words too soon.

6 comments:

No wonder I don't feel like a writer! I am probably close to two per cent writing of words I read. That is a cool thing to have. Never thought of output in relation of input with my writing. Thanks again, Hope, for the focus.

For whatever it's worth, my first published novel had a NaNoWriMo rough draft. The published version, a novella, cut 20% of the words (just over 10K) from the rough draft. I've finished NaNoWriMo five times, and so far, this is the only result I've published.

My sister, a biologist, had a lab professor who put it wonderfully: "If more than 5% of your experiments turn out as expected, you're not being creative enough."

I love this theory - it's one I've stuck to for a long while though I never realised I was until I read this post. So I'm going to keep reading and writing and reading and writing and hopefully one day produce enough fruit to publish.

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If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. ~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Hope is founder of FundsforWriters.com. Find her clips in Writer's Digest, The Writer, and other trade magazines. Alma Mater is Clemson University which gives her an eerie love for all things orange. Her newest release is Palmetto Poison, released by Bell Bridge Books in February 2014. Lowcountry Bribe is the first in the Carolina Slade series. Tidewater Murder is the second. Available at Amazon, B&N and www.bellbridgebooks.com

Hope speaks to writers groups all over the country regarding earning a living as a writer, mystery writing, and her favorite subject, The Shy Writer. She lives on the banks of Lake Murray in SC.